Top positive review

Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) is, in my opinion, still the best option for anyone wishing a photo editor. It may not be the cheapest; it may not even be the most feature-laden but it wins over all the rest for the following reasons.

1. Even if it isn't the cheapest it is not that much more expensive than the competition. I only paid £32.99 for my copy (during a one-day sale) on Amazon and at that price it was an absolute steal.2. The range of features it offers is already superb but it is being expanded all the time - witness the latest list of additions to PSE12 over version 11.3. The Adobe range of photo editors is still the industry standard. As a result, the array of 3rd party help and support available is immense. All of the photo' magazines on the market today tell you how to make adjustments using PS/PSE. I don't know of any magazines that tell you how to do the same things using competing products. Add to that the range of PS/PSE dedicated magazines and books; the huge number of on-line forums and tutorial sites and finally, more plug-in sites than you can shake a stick at and you can see that there is a lot of support out there. If you are new to photo editing and think you will need help with your software then you may struggle to access it if you go down a non-Adobe route.4. If you get seriously into your photography and want to go down the Adobe Lightroom (LR) route then you will find seamless integration between the two products. Some people have suggested that nowadays all you need is LR. Well it depends what you want to do with your images and whether you shoot in raw. If you want to be able to edit right down to individual pixel level then you will need PSE. If you want to use layers you will need PSE. If you want to do dynamic re-composition then you need PSE. And, if you buy PSE 12 then you get the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw as part of the package and so have huge amounts of control over your raw files anyway.

So in summary; PSE is a pixel editor and can do things which LR (a metadata editor) cannot. PSE is wonderful at what it does and is relatively easy to pick up and learn. But, if you are struggling there is a huge amount of help available.

The ideal solution:- Buy PSE12 AND LR5. This seems to be a favoured solution for most of the serious amateurs I know.

Top critical review

I bought this as it was on special offer and I thought it was time to upgrade from PSE8 which I've been using very happily for the past few years. First impressions however are disappointing. There may be things I have yet to discover which will improve my experience, but as a reasonably advanced user I still prefer the older version and have gone back to using that for now.

This new version has various different interfaces depending on whether you classify yourself as beginner, intermediate or expert. The 'beginner' interface as it suggests just has basic editing functionality and a number of wizards to help you do creative stuff with your photos. Probably fine for basic home users. As you go into the more advanced interfaces, you get more functions and more control over the editing as you would expect. I went straight for the 'advanced' user interface which seems much more cluttered than the PSE8 workspace I'm used to. The control palette icons are big and colourful, more like a children's software program than a professional bit of software and take up far too much space on the desktop. The adjustment palette is not stacked with the layers palette as before and can either be free floating (which gets in the way) or docked by the side of the layers palette, which takes up more space and further reduces the available size of the editing window.

Overall impression is that while this incorporates new features, the program has been' dumbed down' to appeal to the less advanced users, leaving the more advanced users with the choice of either putting up with the lack of editing space or buying the full version of Photoshop CS-whatever, which is out of the price range of many people.

I may play around with this further in due course to see if I can find ways of making it more user-friendly, but first impressions have left me a bit disappointed. Sorry Adobe.

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I bought this as it was on special offer and I thought it was time to upgrade from PSE8 which I've been using very happily for the past few years. First impressions however are disappointing. There may be things I have yet to discover which will improve my experience, but as a reasonably advanced user I still prefer the older version and have gone back to using that for now.

This new version has various different interfaces depending on whether you classify yourself as beginner, intermediate or expert. The 'beginner' interface as it suggests just has basic editing functionality and a number of wizards to help you do creative stuff with your photos. Probably fine for basic home users. As you go into the more advanced interfaces, you get more functions and more control over the editing as you would expect. I went straight for the 'advanced' user interface which seems much more cluttered than the PSE8 workspace I'm used to. The control palette icons are big and colourful, more like a children's software program than a professional bit of software and take up far too much space on the desktop. The adjustment palette is not stacked with the layers palette as before and can either be free floating (which gets in the way) or docked by the side of the layers palette, which takes up more space and further reduces the available size of the editing window.

Overall impression is that while this incorporates new features, the program has been' dumbed down' to appeal to the less advanced users, leaving the more advanced users with the choice of either putting up with the lack of editing space or buying the full version of Photoshop CS-whatever, which is out of the price range of many people.

I may play around with this further in due course to see if I can find ways of making it more user-friendly, but first impressions have left me a bit disappointed. Sorry Adobe.

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Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) is, in my opinion, still the best option for anyone wishing a photo editor. It may not be the cheapest; it may not even be the most feature-laden but it wins over all the rest for the following reasons.

1. Even if it isn't the cheapest it is not that much more expensive than the competition. I only paid £32.99 for my copy (during a one-day sale) on Amazon and at that price it was an absolute steal.2. The range of features it offers is already superb but it is being expanded all the time - witness the latest list of additions to PSE12 over version 11.3. The Adobe range of photo editors is still the industry standard. As a result, the array of 3rd party help and support available is immense. All of the photo' magazines on the market today tell you how to make adjustments using PS/PSE. I don't know of any magazines that tell you how to do the same things using competing products. Add to that the range of PS/PSE dedicated magazines and books; the huge number of on-line forums and tutorial sites and finally, more plug-in sites than you can shake a stick at and you can see that there is a lot of support out there. If you are new to photo editing and think you will need help with your software then you may struggle to access it if you go down a non-Adobe route.4. If you get seriously into your photography and want to go down the Adobe Lightroom (LR) route then you will find seamless integration between the two products. Some people have suggested that nowadays all you need is LR. Well it depends what you want to do with your images and whether you shoot in raw. If you want to be able to edit right down to individual pixel level then you will need PSE. If you want to use layers you will need PSE. If you want to do dynamic re-composition then you need PSE. And, if you buy PSE 12 then you get the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw as part of the package and so have huge amounts of control over your raw files anyway.

So in summary; PSE is a pixel editor and can do things which LR (a metadata editor) cannot. PSE is wonderful at what it does and is relatively easy to pick up and learn. But, if you are struggling there is a huge amount of help available.

The ideal solution:- Buy PSE12 AND LR5. This seems to be a favoured solution for most of the serious amateurs I know.

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Version 12 of this very popular photo editing software comes with two disks, one for windows based pc's the other for mac pc's. This update has a user interface which is slightly different to the previous version and the controls and feature effects now have a much quicker way of previewing the effects on screen before you apply them. The program interface at first looks very dumbed down and aimed at very new users to photo editing but regular users will quickly be back to finding that you can use the program with the short cuts of previous versions. If you are purchasing for the first time it probably makes sense to get this version, whether the new interface adds any extra functionality for version 11 users is really a matter of personal choice. It would be wise to use the features compare option on the Adobe website to make your final choice.

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I have been using PSE 9 for a couple of years and had heard good things about PSE 12. With a combination of PSE and Lightroom now becoming the norm for amateurs (and some professionals) because of the dubious decision by Adobe to stop selling PS this item makes a very economical and sensible purchase. This new version has an entirely different look and I have found that a little bit of trial and error is necessary to achieve the same results that I used to. I like the way that the tools are now grouped into 'families' - this makes them easier to locate once you are used to it. The new tool everyone is talking about is the context-sensitive move tool which means in a lot of circumstances you are able to select an object and drag it to a different part of the picture and the background is filled in for you (requiring perhaps a little clone tool use afterwards). I have only been using it for a short time but so far I am enjoying it. Well worth the £33.99 I spent on it at Amazon.

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After transferring loads of photos from my Dell laptop to my new Mac, it took me a while to re-organize everything.Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 has become indispensable for downloading, editing and organizing all my photos. Great!I take lots of photos and the 2 parts (Photoshop Elements 12 Editor and Adobe Elements 12 Organizer) are in constant use!I tried other systems but for me, this is the most convenient and the best one.

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I have used Elements in the past and found it to a very useful photo editing tool. Elements 12 has surpassed all previous versions. The way into the package is more efficient than before and the edit process is a lot easier with a large number of the processes having short cuts. being able to remove, or move unwanted item in a photo is great and is completed quite quickly with little evidence of what was there before, a big improvement on previous versions and other packages.For those who do not want or cannot afford to purchase the full version of CS, then you could do a lot worse than go for this package and at the price is a very good buy.

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Purchased on special introductory offer. Some issues transferring catalogue from Elements 6, so had to reload files to a new catalogue. Most titles and tags were retained so not really a major problem but wasted several hours. I used Vista and Windows Mail, but could not use the in program attach to e-mail to send pictures as Windows Mail was not supported. Eventually after a long on-line chat session and some experimenting I had to load Windows Live as my e-mail client it worked although still seemed to use the old Windows mail.

The program layout is very different from Elements 6, generally improved, but some functions are more difficult to find and takes some getting used to. On-line hellp is fairly good but not so convenient as a handbook I purchased Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski's Photoshop Elements 12 book. which shows how to do it by example. Also the same photos used in the book can be downloaded for practice on the techniques used.

If you do very little editing other than cropping and saturation/colour correction it is probably not worth upgrading. Although the auto corrections are better.

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I like to manipulate photo's and find new effects and enhancements, I have had Elements in the past about 6 years ago and went with Corel Paint Shop Pro for a change which to be fair is a good programme, but reading reviews of this latest version of Elements I ventured to have a go, I am not disappointed, this is very user friendly many of the Elements can be used with the click of the mouse or sliders to place the effect or change required, I am only scratching the surface with my use at the moment but reading the on-line tips and a book specifically written for Elements 12 by Scott Kelby & Matt Kloskowski (available from Amazon) I am sure my expertise will develop (along with my snaps).

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I was becoming concerned in that my copy of the original Photoshop CS, bought about nine years ago and used daily ever since, won't work with current versions of Apple OS and that therefore, when my six year old MacBook (running on Snow Leopard) fails and has to be replaced, if it ever does, I'd have no alternative but to update to Photoshop CC and go with Adobe's new and apparently deeply unpopular rental regime. I can only say to anyone in my situation, no worries, Photoshop Elements 12 does just about everything the original Photoshop CS does and in a more user-friendly way, and at the price is quite extraordinary value. I just hope that, unlike what has happened to the 'real' Photoshop, it remains available in its present form, ie., available to buy, outright, on disc, the installation of which couldn't be easier.

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This is the fourth version of this product that I have bought for my iMac and the new features continue to bring interest to the system. It does not rate five stars merely because the group photo merge is not nearly as flexible as one would like. For instance, adding a figure to the group requires the source to be of very similar size to the target photograph and the ability to move that figure is somewhat limited by the clumsy 3-point alignment system.

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